The Raid

First, I am telling this story using the words of a woman from the 1700s. Some terms may not be Politically Correct (PC). This is not done to offend, but to be historically accurate. Sorry no pictures for this one.

As I was reading the "The Vogt Family History", the family book that I mentioned in my post titled "Will You Spell That for Me?", I found a story of an "Indian" raid that happened in 1778. My 4 times Great Grandparents, Michael and Elizabeth Vogt, were living in Pennsylvania at the time of the story. Michael was born in Union County, PA  in 1755 and died there in 1833 at the age of 78. He lived in the same area his whole life and was a hard working farmer like his father before him. Michael and Elizabeth had 18 surviving children. In the book it tells the story of an "Indian" raid in 1778 that happened while Elizabeth was working in the fields.

Here is Elizabeth's account of the raid:
Elizabeth was threshing flax on their place where the road through Chappell`s Hollow comes out into Dry Valley, when the Indians came upon them suddenly. Her baby was near her, and she picked it up and ran. Another child that could just run about, was back of their little barn. Elizabeth hears the child call "Oh Mother, take me along too," Elizabeth looked around and the Indians were close upon her. She ran the whole way, two miles, to Penn`s Creek, to a house where the neighbors had gathered. Elizabeth never heard of her child again; but there was no indication that the child was killed, and Elizabeth hoped for it`s return someday. At night in the quite hours of the day , the last words of her child, "Oh Mother, take me along too", rang in her ears long years after.

Elizabeth said that the house they took refuge in was surrounded by Indians. They suffered from thirst and a man named Peter said he would have water if he died for it. They allowed him to go out, and as he turned the corner of the house, a rifle cracked, and he fell dead. The next day the Indians withdrew, and they embarked in canoes and went down Penn`s Creek. On the Isle of Que, she said, she went into a house and found no one about. A baby set propped up in a cradle. On close inspection she found it was dead, and the marks of a tomahawk.

It was very hard to tell if the story was completely true, or had been changed a bit as centuries have gone by. What I have been able to uncover is that some tribes in the area of my ancestors fought on the side of the British in the Revolutionary War. These tribes raided many settlements and massacred the settlers and took some captive. The timing of Elizabeth's story matches the times of those raids.

There is another story in the book for this same family that tells of Michael and Elizabeth's daughter, Esther, who they say was the oldest child. Esther's birth year is 1777, which would have made her an infant at the time of the raid in Elizabeth`s story above. She could  have been the baby she ran with. They do not have a record of the child that was taken in the raid and they do not mention if the child was male or female. They also do not state the child`s age, just that it was able to walk about. You would think that the child would have had to of been at least 4 or 5 to be able to yell for their mother to take them along.

The second story in the book says that Esther was shot through the breast by Indians in 1784 while out in the barnyard milking the cows. She died immediately. She was aged seven years. The story states that the mother and one other daughter escaped the attack of the "savages," the father firing at them from the house and driving them away, in the twilight of the early evening, just as the sun was setting in the western horizon of the Autumn day.

This is where the story does not add up. If Esther is 7 in 1784, the only children born between 1777 and 1784 were all boys. The next girl, Barbara, was not born until 1789. This means the mother could not have escaped with a daughter, it would have had to of been a son.

It is so hard to tell if these stories are completely true or not. Esther is the only child of record that we do not have a birth or death, month and day, recorded, only years. The story of the 1778 raid is very detailed with names of places and people. I wonder if at sometime the two stories were one. Maybe the raid happened in 1784, Esther was milking the cows while Elizabeth was in the field. The Indians came, Esther yelled for her Mother before she was shot and Elizabeth ran away without Esther, carrying her son Jonas, who was born in 1784. Maybe it was just easier for her to handle Esther being captured instead of killed when she left her. That raid had to have haunted Elizabeth for the rest of her life. Unfortunately we may never know the whole tragic story.